Ridley Scott Reveals What Parts of ‘Blade Runner 2049’ Were His Ideas, and One Big Criticism

Ridley Scott didn’t direct the sequel to his Blade Runner, this year’s Blade Runner 2049, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved in it in some way. In a lengthy interview with Vulture published on Tuesday, Scott explained what parts of the movie were his, and said what we’ve all been thinking: it was very very long.

During his chat about his new movie All the Money in the World, the subject of Blade Runner 2049 naturally came up. When asked what he made of the Denis Villeneuve film’s reception, Scott said:

[Whispers] I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say. It was f—ing way too long. F— me! And most of that script’s mine.

When he was asked for clarification, Scott explained that he’d sat down for discussions with the writers, but didn’t take credit because of all the complicated proof you have to provide to the studio.

I sit with writers for an inordinate amount of time and I will not take credit, because it means I’ve got to sit there with a tape recorder while we talk. I can’t do that to a good writer. But I have to, because to prove I’m part of the actual process, I have to then have an endless amount [of proof], and I can’t be bothered.

But the big idea comes from Blade Runner. Tyrell is a trillionaire, maybe 5 to 10 percent of his business is AI. Like God, he has created perfect beings that, for all intents and purposes, there is no telling the difference from humans. Then he says, “You know what? I’m going to create an AI. I’ll have a male and female, they will not know that they’re both AIs, I’ll have them meet each other, they will fall in love, they will consummate, and they will have a child.” That’s the first film. The second film is, what happens to the baby? You’ve got to have the baby, you can’t have the mother, so the mother has to inexplicably die four months after she breastfeeds. The bones are found in the box at the foot of the tree — that’s all me. And the digital girlfriend is me. I wanted an evolution from Pris, who is inordinately sexy in the original, right?

Okay, so, among other things, he seems to have just confirmed that in his version of the story, Deckard is most definitely a replicant. Scott enjoys the darker aspects of stories like these, and messing with people’s and robots’ minds. At least he still has his Alien franchise with which to try out the rest of his bizarre, wonderful ideas.